Tag Archives: soldier

With her world in dire straits, Captain Duncan has a desperate plan to even the odds.

Freshly promoted to a new incarnation of the New Glasgow Marines, Rachel Duncan must lead her men in a desperate mission to end the FUP siege on her home world. Her world is in dire straits and she must devise a plan to even the odds before all is lost.

Outnumbered and out gunned, they try to lure in the enemy with thoughts of an easy prize.Can they force the Union to the bargaining table or will they face the wrath of the largest navy in the known galaxy?

Duncan scanned the room. Her team was in position. All were in their light armor and behind cover. To her right was Jenkin’s group. Three men, two with rifles and Gordo the heavy gunner. They stacked up in the corridor.

The lights flashed over the docking door as the enemy ship sealed the bridge between the two ships and flooded the connection tube with atmosphere. Lights changed from a blinking red, to a stable yellow and finally green.

The doors parted on the Q-Ship. Duncan could make out that the legs that were emerging from behind the rising door were unarmored. So far, the intel was correct. They should be able to pull this off.

She sighted down her rifle and as soon as the chests of the FUP navy sailors were visible; she opened fire. Ten shots fired and all four men were on the ground. Jenkin’s had his team sprinting into the airlock across to the enemy ship.

Duncan waved her men forward to join in the assault. As far as she could tell, the enemy didn’t get out a warning before they fell. In a few seconds they had passed the tube and were in the FUP patrol ship. Jenkin’s team headed for the bridge. She was to lead her group to the engine room.

One thing they practiced with was using chalk to mark out their progress. Jenkin’s marked the corridor with an arrow for the direction his team had taken. It conveyed exactly what he did without an electronic transmission the enemy could pick up.

Duncan went the opposite direction from the arrow mark. The ship was a small escort vessel that was being used for inspections. As such, the design was rather straight forward. There was only one deck. The bridge was in the front of the patrol craft with the engine room in the rear. In between were the various crew quarters and functions needed to run the warship.

As they sprinted down the hall, a door opened to the left and an officer stepped out into the corridor. Duncan swung the butt of her rifle up into the forehead of the man and slammed him back into the room he exited. She kept running past towards her objective.

There was a distant booming sound from behind them. That was probably Jenkin’s team breaching the bridge. Ahead was a secure door for the engine room and engineering section. The closed hatch presented a problem. They only had a few seconds to get in before she estimated that the enemy would realize that they were under attack.

In a war torn world, one soldier rises above the ashes to take the fight to the enemy.

New Glasgow lays in ruins. Sergeant Rachel Duncan leads her under armed platoon against the mechanized iron fist of the Federation union of Planets. Short on men and even less supplies, all they have to do is hold their ground until reinforcements arrive. Will Duncan rise to the occasion or will she crack under the intense pressure of a world under siege?

The rifle lay beside her as her back pushed tight against the shattered wall. She was breathing slowly to control her heart rate. The walker’s metal joints squealed and its feet pounded the broken pavement of the street below.

Counting in her head, she reached zero. With a flick of a finger, moved the rifle’s selector switch to auto. Taking the pistol grip, she raised the weapon to her shoulder and braced it on top of the shattered wall.

The building was an apartment complex in the past. Now, it stood ruined and derelict like most buildings in her city. As she got ready to fire, she noticed the remains of wallpaper still clung to the wall she hid behind. Pastel ducks, bunnies and bears told her that the room she occupied was once a nursery. Now it was a ruin.

The Walker’s thumping feet propelled it closer. There, it was two hundred meters down the street. Standing four stories tall, the Walker’s torso pivoted from side to side looking for danger. Through the holographic site, she could make out the unit markings. This was a command vehicle of the Seventh Union Mechanized Infantry Division. It was probably the battalion commander’s mech based on the antennas protruding from its iron grey head.

The Walker’s sprouted small weapon pods from either side of its head. It was malevolence in motion. Walker’s projected the power of the Union. More so than their navy as these were the sharp end of the Union’s will.

Sweat rolled out from under her dusty balaclava and into her eyes. She tried to blink them clear as movement could attract unwanted attention. Waiting was always the hardest part. Engage too soon and you risked the rounds not being able to penetrate. Too late and they may not arm in time and would bounce off of the mech’s armor.

There. She pulled the trigger and unleashed on the walker. With the mech a bare fifty meters from her position, the inferno rounds ate deeply into the armored skin. The first four shots were right on target. They impacted on the cockpit view screen and armor in the head of the beast. The remaining eight rounds walked to the left across the head and into the right weapons pod. Using the recoil to push her over, she fell on her back beside the wall she used for cover.

The weapons pod pulsed with light that brightened the ruin she hid within. She could only feel the deafening explosion. Her ear buds she wore under the balaclava protected her hearing from loud noises but amplified the quiet ones. Blast waves rolled over the building and knocked loose more bricks, dust and debris into the room. Covering her head with her arms, she kept her face from being torn by falling brick and shrapnel.

With her head turned towards the center of her position, she locked eyes with a blue cloth rabbit. The well-worn toy was dust covered. Another reminder of what the Union has done to her home, her people and her planet. She reached out and picked up the toy. The face and ears were threadbare from the attentions of a child now long gone from this ruin. She thought of her own family, her little sister Janice in particular. Janice was only eight when she joined the militia. It was only a year later when the bombs fell on her city and Sergeant Rachel Duncan’s only remaining family was the militia.